Poetry - December, 2013

Be present with your want of a Deityand you shall be present with the Deity.Thomas Traherne

Sometimes I lose you. Say you are a puppyand I’ve left the door ajar. Or I’m due someplaceand can’t remember where. In my sticky-uppyhair and ripped work shirt, I ransack the placeto find my datebook. Gone. Or I’ve droppedmy glasses and I’m crawling on all foursto swab the floor with outstretched hands. I mopblindly, my heart stuttering with fear.

Don’t tell me you are not a puppy. I know.You’re not some destination. But I want totell you what it’s like to hunt, althoughthe words are clumsy. Vapor. What it comes to:You are the sky, the boat, the oars, the water.You are the soul that longs to row and you’re the rower.

First, use four similes to describe the lake:Grinnell Lake is like . . . a threshold . . . a turquoise . . . wings arching open . . . a nest.

+++At the end of the boardwalk over red-rock streams,beyond the suspension bridge, the waterfall, the long hike,my feet on fire empty into the lake: home.Icy aqua iridescence, perfection of mountains, these trees.

+++In the lobby of the grand hotel miles belowhang beautifully framed old photos. Grinnell Glacier,a wisp above us now, was enormous a century ago, its lake many times smaller.

How can we protect the earth but by drawing close, by falling in love? The lake is the glacier melting too fast. The lake is the waters from Jesus’ pierced side. The lake is the face of the love that saves us.How can we love the earth but by falling . . . in?

Reluctant to relinquish our intimacyyour sharp essence clings to my fingers, likea reputation. Hours later, in the dark, you seasonthe air around my hands, I’ll stud you withstars of cloves to bury in the belly of the birdbefore roasting. Or nestle your pearlswith a stalk of mint among the green peas.If I leave you too long in the pantry, yourpatience exhausted, attenuated, soft at the center,you send up green spears through the mesh bagthat call out chop me, make a salad, I am delicious.

How do I interpret my ownlayered membranes, like growth rings?I try to peel away the layers of myonion heart, never getting all the way in.

No one understood my nightly need to be reassuredI’d wake up again the next day. Eyes closed, I sawno sheep but the tufts of pampas grass looming silverlike a solitary path.The scroll hung above me, a verse in fiveand seven, its flowing hand thinand illegible—I still knew it was about our lifenot lasting very long.How is it that adults were okay with such a prospect?In July, bamboo blades rustled againstpaper cranes and prayer strips; I wondered howI’d made the cut, when I wasn’t a boymy father wanted, wasn’t a koi princessmy mother said would magically turnher tail into a pair of legs.I looked for the fabled rabbits on the moon,a family of them taking turnsto pound rice into pearly cakesalong their dark, elliptical orbit.

Century Marks

Study war no more

Mar 18, 2011

Michael Izbicki grew up in a nondenominational church in California. A National Merit Scholarship finalist, he chose to go to the U.S. Naval Academy out of a sense of duty to his country during a time of war. At the naval academy he began to doubt whether the career to which he had committed himself could be squared with the tenets of just war doctrine. He got in trouble when he responded no to this exam question: "If given the order, would you launch a missile carrying a nuclear warhead?" After a four-year legal battle, the navy discharged him as a conscientious objector. Izbicki may have to reimburse the service for part or all of his education (New York Times, February 22).